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If you've lost all faith in humanity, read this fantastic story about the Police and Fire Departments of Arlington, Texas, coming together to make a 7-year-old boy's dream come true: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Gawker
When life hands you lemons, you’re supposed to make lemonade. Six-year-old Drew Cox did just that. Drew’s father, Randy Cox of Gladewater, Texas, underwent chemotherapy to treat cancer. Drew wanted to help in any way he could.
Drew said he felt sad and wanted to help his father with medical bills.
“He is so important to me. We like to play with each other. Lots of times we like to play games,” Drew told a local television station.
Randy Cox says he has medical insurance but still will have to pay thousands of dollars in medical costs out of pocket.
Drew opened his stand for business outside his home on Saturday morning, charging 25 cents a cup. Word of his benevolent venture spread quickly, with some customers coming from dozens of miles away.
One person wrote a $5,000 check and by the end of the day, Drew raised more than $10,000.
When
a 6-year-old girl in kindergarten got rowdy, the school principal called
the cops, who came and handcuffed the child:
According to the police report, kindergartner Salecia Johnson is accused of tearing items off the walls and throwing furniture.
She was crying in the principal's office at Creekside Elementary before police arrived Friday. The report says the girl knocked over a shelf that injured the principal. It also says she was seen biting the door knob of the office and jumping on the paper shredder. And, it says, she attempted to break a glass frame above the shredder.
The report says when the officer tried to calm the child, she resisted and was cuffed.
"Our policy is that any detainee transported to our station in a patrol vehicle is to be handcuffed in the back. There is no age discrimination on that rule," said Milledgeville Chief of Police Dray Swicord.
They took the child to the police station where she was charged with simple assault and damage to property. Because of her age, she will not be prosecuted.
Is 6-year-old too young to be handcuffed and booked with a crime? Link
Previously on Neatorama: Kid Handcuffed and Perp Walked for Doodling on Desk
Twenty
five years after he got lost whilst traveling on a train in India, a man
found his mother using the unlikeliest of technology, satellite images.
Here's the incredible story of how Saroo Brierly used Google Earth to reunite with his long lost mother:
Saroo was only five years old when he got lost. He was travelling with his older brother, working as a sweeper on India's trains. "It was late at night. We got off the train, and I was so tired that I just took a seat at a train station, and I ended up falling asleep."
That fateful nap would determine the rest of his life. "I thought my brother would come back and wake me up but when I awoke he was nowhere to be seen. I saw a train in front of me and thought he must be on that train. So I decided to get on it and hoped that I would meet my brother."
Saroo did not meet his brother on the train. Instead, he fell asleep and had a shock when he woke up 14 hours later. Though he did not realise it at first, he had arrived in Calcutta, India's third biggest city and notorious for its slums. [...]
Soon he was sleeping rough. "It was a very scary place to be. I don't think any mother or father would like to have their five year old wandering alone in the slums and trains stations of Calcutta."
Let's face the god-awful truth: you will never ever be as hip as these hipster kids, especially when they wear those oh-so-cool Very French Gangsters prescription eyeglasses.
Whodathunk that being four-eyes is now the new hotness? Link - via Notcot
Can you do a decent cover of a Rammstein song if your drummer is five years old? Yes -even a good one! If that answer surprises you, go watch the Children Medieval Band at NeatoBambino. Link
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Apprehensive and inexperienced parents seek out advice from people who are only too happy to tell you the “right” way to bring up baby. Then science tells us that “right” way is baloney. For example, here’s a study about giving kids candy:
The researchers studied over 11,000 kids ages 2 to 18 who were divided into two groups. One group was fed sweets and chocolate about 4 grams above their daily recommended sugar intake, while the other kids received no sweets at all (having to sustain themselves on a steady diet of pity and taunts from the first group). Despite the almost negligible amount of candy they’ve been given, the results of the study showed that, statistically, the candy-munching brigade were later 22 to 26 percent less likely to be overweight than the kids raised on free-range carrots and vegan water.
The good news didn’t end there. Kids who rode the sugar dragon also had lower levels of a protein that has been linked to heart disease and other chronic illnesses, which goes against all the so-called common sense of healthy nutrition. However, the results only applied to typical sugar candy and not chocolate, for no other reason than life just being arbitrary and unfair.
Yep, parenting basically boils down to common sense and moderation, just as you thought. Read more at Cracked. Link
Over the past few years, you’ve probably read about how the age of puberty for girls is getting gradually younger. Surprise! Boys are affected, too. And the phenomenon is causing trouble for the world’s most famous boys choirs.
At the venerable St. Thomas Boys Choir, where Bach once drilled pupils in their scales, leaders have redoubled recruitment efforts and taken in boys at a younger age to make sure the choir has a full stock of voices ranging from the deepest bass to the most clarion-pure soprano. Children whose voices are deepening wait out the change by working the ticket booth.
The cause of the shift remains unclear. But some choir leaders say it is having a subtle effect on their music, and it’s not just that they have to buy more acne medication. The younger the boy, the less life experience and maturity underpins the complex emotions in what they sing, even if they’re more willing to study their scores instead of pining about romance.
“We have only a short time, from age 9 until 12, to squeeze in all the musical training for the boys,” said Stefan Altner, manager of the St. Thomas Boys Choir and once one of its singers. When he started working at the choir in 1993, most voices broke when boys were 14 or 15, he said. Now the average is closer to 13.
When Johann Sebastian Bach led the St. Thomas Boys Choir in the 1700s, the average age for voice change was 17 to 18. Even then, the search for a lasting golden voice led to drastic measures that would never be considered today. Read more at the Washington Post. Link -via Breakfast Links
(Image credit: Jan Woitas/ZB)
A few years ago, we brought you a story of twins born to mixed-race parents, who looked alike except for widely different skin tone. Now Kian and Remee are seven years old, and the two girls still look very much alike, except for the colors of their eyes, hair, and skin. Their mother Kylee remembers the day they were born:
‘I noticed that both of them had beautiful blue eyes,’ she said.
‘But while Remee’s hair was blonde, Kian’s was black and she had darker skin. To me, they were my kids and they were just normal. I thought they would start to look the same as time went on.’
Time, however, only accentuated their differences. Kian’s eyes changed colour and her skin got darker. Remee’s complexion got lighter and her curly hair stayed blonde. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kylee found herself fielding questions about whose children they were, or who Kian’s fair-haired friend was, when she pushed them in their side-by-side buggy.
‘People would ask me why I dressed the children the same,’ Kylee said. ‘I’d just say: “because they’re twins,” and leave people to work it out. It kind of irritated me at first, but everyone in my area got to know they were twins and accepted it. It was only strangers or outsiders who didn’t know.’
The girls go to different classes at school and have different interests, but they are best friends as well as sisters. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
Grandpa Jim wants to throw a house party for your kids, where he’ll teach them about religion and old timey fun in a lame, milquetoast approved way! So this is what (some) kids did for fun before the interwebs? Sign me up!
By the way, if you want to throw a Grandpa Jim style party of your own (and who wouldn’t!), there are party kits available online for as little as $7 American. Go fun!
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The Decipher the Doodle Contest returns to NeatoBambino and it’s another chance for you to win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! The doodle in question (which you only see a small portion of here) was drawn by a five-year-old girl. What is it supposed to illustrate? Both the commenter closest to the correct answer and the commenter with the funniest wrong answer at the contest site will win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Be sure to read all the rules before you leave an entry. Good luck! Link
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When
Joseph Gonzalez found out that his 12-year-old son Jose stole $100 from
a family member's wallet, the father decided to punish him in this unusual
way:
Jose's punishment is spending many hours of his spring break standing on the corner of 22nd and Larimer streets in downtown Denver with a bright yellow sign announcing: "I am a thief. I took money from a family member." [...]
Jose put in five hours of curbside confession Tuesday, standing across from his father's pawnshop, where Gonzalez could keep an eye on him — and take him pizza slices.
He figures Jose, with drinks and bathroom breaks, should be able to put in 10 hours Thursday.
This was Jose's first theft - and his father hopes, with this punishment, there won't be a second. But what about the kid's reputation? The father wasn't concerned:
"Nah, he's only 12 years old," he said. "Everybody makes mistakes at that time in their life. It's about being corrected."
Denver Post's Electa Draper has the story: Link (Photo: Joe Amon/The Denver Post)
What do you think Neatoramanauts? Tough love or child abuse?
Last week we told you about Batman being pulled over by the police in Montgomery County, Maryland for driving his black Lamborghini without proper plates. There turns out to be much more to the story. This Caped Crusader’s alter ego is businessman Lenny B. Robinson, who spends his money and his spare time encouraging sick children in hospitals. And he’s serious about his mission. Washington Post journalist Michael S. Rosenwald, who is a friend of Robinson, accompanied him on a trip to the cancer ward at Children’s National Medical Center in Northwest Washington.
It took Batman approximately 20 minutes to reach the elevators. He stopped to hand out Batman toys to every child he saw, picking them up for pictures, asking them how they were feeling. LaTon Dicks snapped a photo of Batman standing behind her son DeLeon in his wheelchair. She’d recognized the Batmobile on her way in to the hospital. Like everyone else, she’d seen a TV report on him being stopped for speeding and protested, “You can’t pull over Batman.”
When Batman finally reached the elevator for the slow ride up to the cancer ward, I could see his face already sweating behind the mask. He told me he loses 5 to 6 pounds in water weight when he wears the superhero uniform. He paid $5,000 for it. He spends $25,000 a year of his own money on Batman toys and memorabilia. He signs every book, hat, T-shirt and backpack he hands out — Batman.
Batman is 48. He is a self-made success and has the bank account to prove it. He recently sold, for a pile of cash, a commercial cleaning business that he started as a teenager. He became interested in Batman through his son Brandon, who was obsessed with the caped crusader when he was little. “I used to call him Batman,” he told me. “His obsession became my obsession.”
Batman began visiting Baltimore area hospitals in 2001, sometimes with his now teenage son Brandon playing Robin. Once other hospitals and charities heard about his car and his cape, Batman was put on superhero speed dial for children’s causes around the region. He visits sick kids at least couple times a month, sometimes more often. He visits schools, too, to talk about bullying. He does not do birthday parties.
The article describes some of Robinson’s Batman’s interactions with the kids, so you should have a hanky ready. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Allen Goldberg)
Watch an adorable video of a class of 4-year-olds performing Randy Newman’s song “Short People” at the Sullivan School in Seoul, South Korea. They were supposed to sing this song with frowning faces, but they had a hard time keeping the smiles down! The video is at NeatoBambino. Link
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This
year's Easter egg hunt in Colorado Springs is canceled ... because of
pushy parents:
Organizers of an annual Easter egg hunt attended by hundreds of children have canceled this year's event, citing the behavior of aggressive parents who swarmed into the tiny park last year, determined that their kids get an egg.
That hunt was over in seconds, to the consternation of egg-less tots and their own parents. Too many parents had jumped a rope set up to allow only children into Bancroft Park in a historic area of Colorado Springs.
Organizers say the event has outgrown its original intent of being a neighborhood event.
Parenting observers cite the cancellation as a prime example of so-called "helicopter parents" — those who hover over their children and are involved in every aspect of their children's lives — sports, school, and increasingly work — to ensure that they don't fail, even at an Easter egg hunt.
Talk about a cool kid’s room set up. One amazing parent made this cool Narnia-themed playroom for her 9 year-old daughter where the only entrance is through the wardrobe. I want one for myself; what a great place to write Neatorama articles!
Link Via BoingBoing
A
few years after Nadya "Octomom" Suleman became a media sensation,
China got its own version
Who is this Chinese Octomom?
Details are hazy, but she and her husband appear to be a wealthy couple from the southern city of Guangzhou.The woman's story first gained attention when a photograph of her eight children, clad in matching onesies and hats, was used as an advertisement for a photo studio. The image quickly prompted investigation.
According to Guanghzhou's government-run newspaper, the woman carried two of the babies to term herself, and enlisted two surrogates, each of whom gave birth to three children, to fill out her brood. The babies were all reportedly born in September and October 2010, and 11 nannies were enlisted to care for them.
The mom and her children are now in hiding, though how you hide 8 kids is beyond me: Link
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William dancing the Jive [YouTube]
So, you think you can dance. Not as well, I bet as, 2-year-old William Stokkebroe.
I suppose William has the genetic gift, as his parents Peter and Kristina Stokkebroe are professional dancers, but still. What could you do when you were 2 years old? I think I was still toddling into furnitures and such.
Here's one more of William dancing the Paso Doble:
This kid rolls like a BOSS in his custom Caddy stroller. Why it even has underbody lights and flames that shoot out of the tailpipes!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Everlasting Blort
Designer Garrett Miller has an ongoing project in which he takes children’s drawings (and their descriptions) and makes them into professional illustrations. The imagination is still there; he just adds the technical abilities to bring the drawings to a more readable level. The picture shown is by 6-year-old Cody. See some other favorites just ahead.
If
you think the $1,200 Stokke
Stroller
Adam Davidson wrote this intriguing article over at The New York Times Magazine on the strange world of the bizarre microeconomy of nannies of the wealthy:
It took Zenaide Muneton 20 seconds to convince me that she was the perfect nanny. Short and dark-haired, she has a goofy, beaming smile and knows how to make everything fun for a little kid. Time to brush your teeth? She shakes her hands and does a pantomimed teeth-brushing dance. Bath time? She pumps her arms up and down in a going-to-the-tub march. After I told her I’d love to hire her, she smiled and thanked me.
Then we both laughed, because there is no way I could possibly afford her. As one of New York City’s elite nannies, Muneton commanded around $180,000 a year — plus a Christmas bonus and a $3,000-a-month apartment on Central Park West. I should be her nanny. [...]
“Over the last 10, 15 years, there has been a big change in how people view their household staff,” says Seth Norman Greenberg, vice president of the Pavillion Agency. Here are some demands on supernannies.
Domestic Life
A nanny can increase her marketability if she can help manage an art collection, draft correspondence, wash and fold 50 linens a day and help set up philanthropic events. Bonus points if she can do it all in Mandarin.Travel
Elite nannies should be comfortable flying privately and in helicopters.Sports
In addition to the generic stuff like skiing and snorkeling, some wealthy families request a nanny to steer a boat, groom a horse, operate a Zamboni or use a firearm to scare off a bear (at the country house).
Got what it takes? It helps if you're Tibetan, of course: Link
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To celebrate the USA’s bicentennial in 1976, ARCO asked people to predict what the world would be like in the year 2076. The responses were published in a book which included children’s drawings of their vision of the future. See more of them at Smithsonian’s Paleofuture blog. Link -via Everlasting Blort
As we close out the Mr. Fred Rogers birthday celebration that is taking place in my head, here’s a clip of the man, the myth, the best friend to children and puppet kings everywhere, humbly accepting a Lifetime Achievement Daytime Emmy Award in 1997. *sniff* I promised myself that I wouldn’t cry…
–via Best Week Ever
Did you know today would have been Mr. Rogers’ 84th birthday? While most entertainment icons we talk about on Neatorama only appeal to people of a certain age, the amazing thing is that most of our readers grew up while Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was being aired regularly. In honor of a great man who contributed so much to the world of children’s television, let’s celebrate with a look at the life and work of Fred McFeely Rogers.
When Mr. Rogers first saw television, the power of the media’s potential immediately blew him away. At the same time though, he loathed the commercially available content, particularly the shows aimed at children. In fact, he once admitted in an interview, “I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there was some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen.”
Eventually, this passion even caused him to leave his first position at a children’s show, as he was sickened by the fact that NBC had to rely on advertisers and merchandising to support the shows children watched for educational purposes.
Before he decided to work in television, Rogers was fascinated by another form of entertainment –music. He even started playing the piano at age five after watching his mother do it during their sing alongs. When he attended college, he immediately went into music and he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music Composition in 1951.
After college, Fred immediately applied to work for NBC, who hired him thanks to his music degree. At first, he was put in the music department of a variety of shows, but eventually, he got to work on a children’s show. After leaving over his ethical issue with the show’s use of advertising, he soon was hired as a puppeteer at WQED, a Pittsburgh public television network.
The whole eight years Fred worked at WQED, he would spend his lunch breaks at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary studying theology and child development. Eventually, he became an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, although he never actually wanted to be a preacher and was specifically instructed to continue his work with children’s television. While he never actually worked in the church, Mr. Rogers was extremely devout and never once had a cigarette or cocktail.
After he left NBC, practically everything Rogers did helped him get ready for the show that made him a household name. And I don’t just mean he learned more about working on children’s shows and how to use puppets, I mean he developed the puppets, characters and music numbers that would eventually work their way into his own show. On The Children’s Corner, the program he started on at WQED, Fred started wearing his famous sneakers because he noticed they enabled him to be quieter while moving around on set. He also started working on the voices of King Friday XIII, Queen Sara Saturday, X the Owl, Henrietta Pussycat, Daniel Striped Tiger and other characters from the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.
In 1963, he was contacted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and asked to develop a 15-minute kid’s program called Misterrogers. While Rogers had never stepped out in front of the camera before, it was Fred Rainsbury, Head of Children’s Programming at CBC who urged him to be the host of the new show. Rainsbury knew Mr. Rogers was great with kids after seeing him interact with children and wanted to bring that realism to the show itself.
more …
Zia is in the 4th grade, so she’s probably nine or ten years old. Here, she wears a camera while taking her first run on the ski jump. She’s certainly got more guts than I do! This is my vision of ski jumping. -via reddit
This reading of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where The Wild Things Are by Christopher Walken isn’t meant to amuse kids, but rather to make us grown folks chuckle while we imbibe our bubbly adult beverages. And whether this is Walken or an impersonator doesn’t really matter, because the narrator’s descriptions of what’s going on in the illustrations are comedy gold.
–via Geek Tyrant
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Artist Nathan Ripperger illustrated things that he has said to his kids in this set of charming "Sh*t parents say" posters over at Flickr: Link - via Hey Oscar Wilde!
Remember when you used to be king and/or queen of the playground, conquering the monkey bars like you’re part simian or hitting the slide so fast you flew off the end of the chute like a rocket ship?
Well, those days are over, you’re all grown up now, so stop messing around or the playground will find a way to get you. Learn by this poor schmuck’s example-don’t try to squeeze in to where you don’t belong. The playgrounds are hungry, my friends, and they prefer to dine on the slow witted…
If you go to see a Little League game in San Diego this spring, chances are you’ll see a matchup of the Padres vs. the Padres. That’s because their uniforms are all various historic versions of the MLB team’s uniforms!
Here’s the deal: All Little League chapters within a 10-mile radius of Petco Park were given the opportunity to choose from 20 past and present Padres jerseys and matching caps, all at no cost. Most of the leagues jumped at the chance. When the dust settled, the Padres had supplied 11,600 jerseys and caps to over 800 local T-ball, baseball and softball teams. Even better, the kids get to keep the gear when the season’s over.
The uniform program is the brainchild of Padres president and COO Tom Garfinkel, who came up with the idea last year during a Little League promotion at Petco Park. “We had about 8,000 Little Leaguers doing a parade around the warning track before the game, and it occurred to me that almost none of them were wearing Padres jerseys,” he recalls. “They had jerseys sponsored by local businesses, jerseys from other teams. And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if they were all Padres?’” So Garfinkel and his staff made it so.
You don’t have to think very long to realize that this is a win-win for everyone involved: The kids get sharp-looking new uniforms; their parents get to reconnect with old Padres uniforms they remember from years past; the leagues can repurpose their uniform budgets toward other objectives (many of them have used the savings to improve their fields, upgrade their scoreboards, and so on); and last but not least, the Padres generate a huge amount of goodwill while forging an early bond with their next generation of customers.
So how will they announce the teams and keep them straight?
“You can’t just say, ‘The Padres are playing the Padres,’” says Bruce Bourdon, another local league administrator. “And we didn’t want to name the teams after the coaches — Bruce’s Padres against Paul’s Padres, or whatever. So instead we’re saying, ‘It’s 1972 home against 1984 road.’”
Link -via Buzzfeed, where you can see more pictures.
Seven-year-old Audri built a monster trap in the Rube Goldberg style. Although it’s not his first such machine, he had to have learned a lot doing this, besides having fun. What really impressed me was his realistically modest expectations and his complete joy when the contraption worked. -via Boing Boing
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